Arnhem from the Air: The RAF’s Fight to Keep Arnhem Alive
Two thousand aircraft cross the Channel in a single afternoon, carrying an entire airborne army toward the Netherlands. Paratroops and gliders drop onto open heathland west of Arnhem almost without opposition, and for one golden hour it looks as though the war might be over by Christmas. Then the plan starts to unravel, and the RAF crews who delivered that army are asked to do something far harder: keep it alive from the air once the ground below them falls into enemy hands.
This episode matters because Operation Market Garden is usually told as a story about soldiers on the ground, when the RAF’s part in it, delivering three divisions in one of the largest airborne operations of the war and then trying desperately to resupply them once everything went wrong, shaped the battle just as decisively.
In this episode:
- How Thirty-eight and Forty-six Groups carried three airborne divisions into the Netherlands on 17 September 1944
- The reconnaissance photographs that warned of German armour near Arnhem, and what happened to the officer who raised the alarm
- Why resupply missions kept dropping onto drop zones the Germans had already captured
- Flight Lieutenant David Lord’s Victoria Cross action with 271 Squadron
- The failure of Thirty Corps to reach Arnhem in time, and the withdrawal across the Rhine in Operation Berlin
Listen if you’re interested in:
- Airborne warfare and troop-carrier operations
- RAF Transport Command in the Second World War
- The Battle of Arnhem and Operation Market Garden
- Acts of individual courage under fire
Explore more from The RAF Chronicle: Read more RAF history, including deep dives on the aircraft and operations covered in this episode, at therafchronicle.co.uk.
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